Bennie and the Jets

Commander / EDH Mono-Blue Multiplayer Primer Storm Tempo Wizards

dinosaurzez

Instant (33)

• 1x Anticipate
• 1x Arcane Denial
• 1x Blue Sun's Zenith
• 1x Brainstorm
• 1x Consider
• 1x Counterspell
• 1x Cryptic Command
• 1x Cyclonic Rift
• 1x Dig Through Time
• 1x Disdainful Stroke
• 1x Dream Fracture
• 1x Fact or Fiction
• 1x Flusterstorm
• 1x Force of Will
• 1x Frantic Search
• 1x High Tide
• 1x Impulse
• 1x Into the Roil
• 1x Keep Watch
• 1x Mission Briefing
• 1x Mystic Confluence
• 1x Mystical Tutor
• 1x Negate
• 1x Opt
• 1x Peer Through Depths
• 1x Pongify
• 1x Rapid Hybridization
• 1x Reality Shift
• 1x Snap
• 1x Swan Song
• 1x Telling Time
• 1x Turnabout
• 1x Whir of Invention

Sorcery (14)

• 1x Fabricate
• 1x Gitaxian Probe
• 1x Merchant Scroll
• 1x Mind's Desire
• 1x Ponder
• 1x Preordain
• 1x Rise from the Tides
• 1x Serum Visions
• 1x Sleight of Hand
• 1x Temporal Manipulation
• 1x Time Spiral
• 1x Time Warp
• 1x Treasure Cruise
• 1x Walk the Aeons

Land (34)

• 29x Island
• 1x Mystic Sanctuary
• 1x Riptide Laboratory
• 1x Seat of the Synod
• 1x Strip Mine
• 1x Tolaria West

Artifact (4)

• 1x Runechanter's Pike
• 1x Sapphire Medallion
• 1x Sensei's Divining Top
• 1x Sol Ring

Planeswalker (1)

• 1x Narset, Parter of Veils

Commander (1)

Creature (8)

• 1x Archaeomancer
• 1x Baral, Chief of Compliance
• 1x Docent of Perfection  ^Flip
• 1x Haughty Djinn
• 1x Snapcaster Mage
• 1x Spellseeker
• 1x Torrential Gearhulk
• 1x Trinket Mage

Enchantment (5)

• 1x Future Sight
• 1x Metallurgic Summonings
• 1x Mystic Remora
• 1x Rhystic Study
• 1x Trail of Evidence

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Building Talrand for a Multiplayer Environment

Talrand can be a bit of a trap for new players wanting to build a deck around him for a multiplayer setting; a lot of people's initial idea is to jam in as many counterspells as the deck can hold and then try to win with an army of drakes while not letting your opponents play. While this gameplan sounds great on paper, it's pretty much impossible to accomplish in a situation where you have more than one opponent.

The biggest difference between Talrand in multiplayer EDH and Talrand in Duel Commander is that in a 1v1 setting, trading your counterspells 1-for-1 with your opponent's spells is a viable gameplan. In multiplayer EDH however, attempting to lock down your opponents with counterspells will accomplish nothing; you simply do not have the mana nor the volume of cards required to keep your opponents suppressed during a multiplayer game. What's worse is that counterspells generate little to nothing for you in terms of card advantage, so while you can play the role of the table police officer it will ultimately accomplish very little for you in the way of actually winning the game.

The other big difference between Talrand in 1v1 and Talrand in multiplayer is that drakes are a much less reliable win condition; 2/2 fliers are great for killing one opponent at 20 life, but a whole lot less great at killing multiple opponents at 40 life. Making one 2/2 flier every turn cycle by casting a single counterspell isn't gonna help win us the game when all the other players at the table are doing stupid broken EDH shenanigans.

Deck Breakdown

Just because we can't counter everything doesn't mean we shouldn't play couterspells, however we also don't want to have an overabundance of them; just enough to counter the really important things. I have a preference for counterspells that either replace themselves by drawing a card, such as Dream Fracture, or are efficiently costed, such as Swan Song. The things that we will be countering most often are; boardwipes that threaten to erase all the drakes we've been accumulating, other player's potentially game winning combos or plays, and spells attempting to disrupt our own game winning combos. Like I said earlier, we can't counter everything, so we need solid threat assessment when we determine if something is worth countering. Furthermore, counterspells are a strong political tool and how you use them will determine whether you're viewed as "that guy that won't let me play" or "that guy who saved us all from Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker".

Since we won't be going overboard on the counterspells package, we have a lot more room for cantrips that will help us filter through our deck. Cards like Impulse and Fact or Fiction will help us guarantee that if our opponent manages to deal with our board of drakes we will be prepared and ready to bounce back. Even though we won't be acting as the table police officer, we still want to leave mana open in the case that something problematic gets cast and needs to be countered; therefore most of our cantrips will be Instants instead of Sorceries. Cards like Concentrate or Compulsive Research simply don't make the cut; since they require us to tap out on our turn preventing us from playing reactively. The few Sorceries we will be playing either cost very little mana and have a powerful effect, such as Ponder, or are game changing enough that they are worth tapping out for, such as Walk the Aeons.

Since multiplayer games are filled with boardwipes and removal, we cannot rely exclusively on Talrand as our win condition. Having redundant effects like Rise from the Tides and Docent of Perfection   will help us follow through with our gameplan if Talrand becomes too expensive, while cards like Trail of Evidence will assure that even if one of these effects isn't in play we will still be getting good value out of our Instants and Sorceries.

Just because our commander only cares about Instants and Sorceries doesn't mean we should ignore creature spells. Cards like Archaeomancer and Snapcaster Mage can provide us invaluable utility while also giving us a body to work with. It just so happens that pretty much every blue creature that deals with Instants and Sorceries is a wizard, meaning cards like Azami, Lady of Scrolls and Riptide Laboratory can provide us with extremely powerful synergies.

Combo Win Conditions

If the game goes on for a long time it becomes increasingly difficult for us to win through combat damage with tokens, as other players will have developed boards that can handily deal with a few small creatures. That doesn't mean we can't win games that go long however; which is where our combo package comes into play. Mono-blue has a number of combos that will allow us to play our entire deck, mill our opponents to death, or simply generate a ton of tokens and then take a bunch of extra turns with Walk the Aeons. Our large quantity of Instants and Sorceries that allow us to filter and draw cards means that we will be able to efficiently dig through our deck to find what we are looking for should we need to. Below I have listed some of the more prominent infinite combo routes in this deck:

- High Tide + Archaeomancer + High Tide again + Snap = Infinite storm count. Infinite mana with any cost reduction card, such as Baral, Chief of Compliance.

- High Tide + Turnabout + Archaeomancer + Riptide Laboratory or Capsize = Infinite storm count and mana.

Although our deck has a few combinations of cards that combine to create infinite loops, most of the time we combo off we will not have all of these pieces in hand. Instead, our combo turn will begin when we feel confident that we can generate enough mana and filter through enough cards that we can find a way to win on that turn. An example of what I might deem a "combo worthy" hand could be something like: High Tide + Snapcaster Mage + Frantic Search + Dig Through Time + whatever else. It's important to note that what constitutes a hand that you can go off with will vary a good deal based on the state of the game and what you have in play. In the next section I will talk briefly about the key cards used in your High Tide combo.

High Tide Engine

High Tide: This is obviously the key card in the combo, if this gets exiled and we were planning to win through combo we become very sad. If we don't have high tide we can tutor for it via Merchant Scroll, Mystical Tutor, Spellseeker, or Long-Term Plans. Once we have high tide, we want to cast it as many times as possible; while one cast is workable, the more mana we can generate the easier our life becomes.

Snap, Frantic Search, Unwind: While these cards are great when we're on the drake beatdown plan, they serve an additional purpose during our combo turn; which is untapping lands. If our islands are tapping for 3 mana each, then casting one of these spells will net us a ton of mana, which we can use as fuel to continue digging through our deck.

Turnabout: Again, while excellent in normal gameplay, this card really shines during combo turns as we can use it to untap all of our lands and generate and absurd amount of mana. Just like high tide, casting this spell multiple times will help pave the road to victory.

Time Spiral: This card is busted. We want to cast this card once we have exhausted all of the other gas in our hand; it will generate a ton of mana and draw us a fresh new hand of 7 cards to keep us going. It also recycles our graveyard into our library, allowing us to draw into our high tides and turnabouts once more.

Blue Sun's Zenith: So we have a ton of mana, but what do we do with it? We spend it to draw a zillion cards; which will either find us a way to win or give us the gas we need to keep comboing off. If we have infinite mana we can also just use this card to deck everyone at the table.

Mind's Desire: The most absurdly broken storm card ever printed, will either win the game on the spot or help us find a way to do so. With a high enough storm count we will flip a combination of cards that just straight up win, but even a mind's desire for 10 or 20 will usually generate enough value to win us the game. In addition to recurring it from our graveyard, we can also use Venser, Shaper Savant effects to return the "real" mind's desire to our hand while it's on the stack, allowing us to cast it again later with a higher storm count once we've resolved all the copies.

FAQ

Q) Why don't you run Gravitational Shift or Favorable Winds?

A) If I have enough drakes for these anthems to be worth casting then I'm probably already winning, they are "win more" cards that generate no advantage on an empty board and make for horrible topdecks.

Q) No Polymorph engine for pulling Eldrazi?

A) I enjoy the value that my wizards creatures create far too much for me to cut them all to run polymorph shenanigans, plus "cheat fatties into play and pray nobody removes them" isn't a strategy I enjoy playing.

Date added	11 years
Last updated	10 months
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	6 - 0 Mythic Rares 26 - 0 Rares 14 - 0 Uncommons 25 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.88
Tokens	Ape 3/3 G, Bird 2/2 U, Clue, Construct */* C, Drake 2/2 U, Frog Lizard 3/3 G, Human Wizard 1/1 U, Manifest 2/2 C, Zombie 2/2 B
Folders	Dr. strangelove, Mono Blue Commander Decks, Talrand Ideas, Neat Commander Decks, Interesting Commander Decks, Untap Fun deck, Ancient Dinosaur Immortals!